Emily’s Letter to Santa
originally published at blogcritics.org
Dear Santa,
Where are you? It seems as you have disappeared from life. Each day brings new challenges to your existence. I need you back. There is a Santa-shaped hole in my heart longing for you.
I remember when believing was easy. When I was five my mother gave me pink and orange coat that I deemed too puffy. She didn’t know what I needed. The next day, you arrived with a giant pink dollhouse. It was exactly what I asked from you. With joy I shouted into my naughty twin brother’s face, “I must have been really good!” They told me to be good for Santa so I was. When my mom held my brother so I could return his punch, I absolutely refused.
From an early age, I believed. My faith in Santa was high with strong levels of holiday cheer. The books, the songs, they were all near hypnotizing. “He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good.” What a powerful man. My mother even said she had kissed him once. At school, we placed our shoes outside the classroom on St. Nicholas Day. An hour later, we had candy in our shoes. Truly, Santa was a man who gave without expecting anything in return, except our goodness, and if you were bad, he would know it.
In college my world was shaken upside down. For the first-time in my life, I met nonbelievers. I can see not believing in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, but this was Santa, the head honcho. It is not like I didn’t know they existed. My dad claimed to not believe at the time when he met my mother. For some reason, I had just never thought about it before. Outside my comfortable holiday boundaries, I began to see different ways of life. The daily exposures to these differences made it difficult for me to maintain my belief. I met others who stopped believing because their parents stopped believing, and others who stopped in exchange for naughtiness. Others didn’t feel they left Santa, but he left them or Santa was something belonging only to their childhood.
One late night, I began discussing Frankenstein with one of my roommates. With no mention of Santa at all, I wondered why Dr. Frankenstein would care so much about letting the monster he created kill his loved ones. I had to question, “What was he really missing?” He didn’t care about the gifts he could have gotten if he lived his life differently, so what is the point of feeling so unworthy? I felt empty inside with the thought of no Santa. Santa was my hope. Life was so unforgiving. When my life got difficult, I had to believe there was something better than this. Perhaps the evils of college had led me away. Was I not being nice enough? I had heard that one bout of naughtiness could affect all areas of my life. Could it be true? Did I push Santa away?
Of course Santa was everywhere, parades, the mall, squeezing into those small chimneys. From what I learned from tradition, he even watched me sleep. Like the Christmas spirit was taken from my body, I did not feel Santa’s presence in my life anymore. Was my whole life a lie? The celebrations, the music, the rituals, the movies, were they all just brainwashing tools? I looked for Santa everywhere. I dug deeper into the holiday festivities. Yet I couldn’t find him. I knew belief was more than a feeling, but when I wrote my Christmas letters, I felt like I was sending them to a no one.
When I looked for him, I just found more reasons not believe. Of course science can’t always fit into a nicely wrapped gift box, but nothing was proving Santa’s existence or non-existence. Yes, I had sat on his lap many a time, but that wasn’t Santa Santa. That was a representation of Santa. I wanted to believe so badly. Others would scrutinize me in my need for answers, calling me a Scrooge and telling me that I wanted him to not exist. I would shoot down their reasons. Faith is just a catch-all for the many things they couldn’t explain. Why does Santa have to have so many names? In school, my philosophy and psychology classes were completely debunking Santa. What do you mean my parents bring the presents? I don’t have a conscience? My joys and all my emotions just came from chemicals in my brain?
So, Santa, this year when you come to town, what I really want from you for Christmas is not makeup or clothes or a ride on your sled through Paris, but to believe again. The magic in my life is gone. The gifts don’t mean anything anymore. Please have Rudolph guide you back into my heart. If you look around the world you can see others lack joy in their lives. There’s depression, rape, murder, suicide, because people have no hope.
It is hard to believe in something you can’t see. If you can go around the world in one night bringing gifts to every child or know when I have been bad or good, why can’t you show your face? You could change the world by showing your face. We don’t need miracles, signs, or a good marketing campaign. We need you. Showing up would make people care again. We need you for more than just for one holiday but in our daily lives. So many out there feign goodness for the presents, acting in the name of Christmas. The hypocrisy sends the wrong message to the non-believers. There is more to life than the final reward, but the present lives we live. Santa, show the world how to be good again, and take us back to the simple loving belief we had as children.
For the Rush of It
originally published at blogcritics.org
“My bouncing is way off.”
“Your bouncing? What’s bouncing?”
After practicing my bouncing and clapping, and chanting sorority ditties for two weeks, I had no idea why anyone on earth wouldn’t know what bouncing was.
“It’s kind of like jumping up and down without leaving the ground,” I answered.
Bouncing was for certain the bane of my existence. This was my second year in a sorority, and the year that I was going to be on the other side of rush, or Recruitment as they like to say. In my whole time in the sorority, I had made about two friends, or at least “people I could talk to.”
My childhood had left me feeling, still, like that awkward overgrown kid with shaggy bangs covering her face. Yet by this time I had blended in with everyone else, except for the awkward part. Recruitment preparation had begun in the spring with the passing out of “The Little Black Book,” which described in detail the outfits we were supposed to wear for the four days of Recruitment, with example pictures, the required jewelry and its color, specific shoes, and whether or not we could wear a headband.
On one of the first days of Work Week (actually two weeks of all-day training before rush), I realized the severity of my lack of coordination. The sorority president separated three other stragglers and me into an empty hallway and made us bounce and clap together. The harmony clearly wasn’t there. Just at that moment, with the four of us bouncing up and down like a game of Whac-A-Mole, the rest of the sorority decided to move rooms. I was humiliated enough without having every girl in the house walk by and see my secret shame.
During short breaks we would have “dress checks,” standing outside the director of rush’s room to see if our outfits were up to par. I went into these events nervous, like I was about to confess my sins to a priest. It could only have been worse if I had no clothes on at all – maybe.
One girl came out visibly upset, explaining, “She told me I get a little bloated in my stomach when I eat too much salty food.”
Fearfully I entered. After looking me up and down, they asked, “What are you wearing underneath?”
Wondering what could be bulging, I admitted, “I already have Spanx on.”
“Oh, OK. That’s fine.”
That’s fine? I spent time, effort and cash to get that’s fine? Clearly this was a joke or a bad dream.
For those of you who don’t know, Spanx is an undergarment used for body-shaping, a modern girdle. It sucks the fat in from the thighs to right below the bra leaving a slim shape free of panty-lines.
When Recruitment was over I called my dad for comfort and balled about how much I hated being there. As a former sorority girl herself, my mom offered little comfort, except telling me to embrace my time there.
“Honey, you’re just like me. You just don’t care.”
For some reason, I found those words from my dad empowering. Yeah, I don’t care, that’s right. I told my friend back at the house about my tears.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve cried to my mom every day.”
My mother didn’t understand. She loved her sorority. “Emily, all my best friends today, I met in my sorority. You just need to be more outgoing. Just say hi to the girls in the house.”
When I moved into the house, I watched as she went around introducing herself as Karen (insert her sorority’s name). I went through rush on my own volition the year prior to work week and moving into the house. I couldn’t completely blame my current circumstances on my mother, even if joining was mostly her idea.
On my Bid Day (the day in which you find out what house you pay your money to for four years), the writing was on the wall. EMILY, LEAVE! As some houses went bowling or roller-skating or on some other tame expedition like that, mine had a DJ and a slip’n’slide in the backyard. Having just met all these people, I wasn’t totally ready to run around half-naked, greased up in Crisco. I am sure I blamed myself as I often do. There wasn’t something wrong with this situation; it was me, and my inability to be “outgoing.”
How did sororities evolve to this? I thought it was about scholarship, sisterhood, and class. But apparently it is about date parties, status, saying one thing but doing another, and making up pretend things to care about. I have seen pictures of the founders from the late 1800s. I couldn’t imagine them with Spanx on under those matronly dresses, or going to weekend fraternity parties themed “Golf Pros and Tennis Hos.”
Now as a junior living in the house (and I do blame this one on mom) as the younger girls pass me in the hall and ask who is that girl? Before I even am out of earshot and as I get snapped at for touching food without tongs, I have to stop myself from jumping and down screaming, “When I grow up, I’M LIVING ALONE! I’M LVING ALONE!”
sweet old ladies
I have been thinking about grandmas, and how we are always trying to protect them from hearing things like they are young children. Perhaps it is out of
respect. But they are old! If anything bad has been done, they probably have already done it. They are soo old. What amount of innocence could they have left? They have done it all. I now like to comfort myself if I am feeling guilty with well Grandma has done worse.
December 7, 2009. Tags: inappropriate comments in front grandma, old ladies, sweet grandmas. Uncategorized. Leave a comment.